Beyond a Blackboard

 Wow, What a whirlwind 8 weeks it has been! My time at the VIA20 Innovator Academy has been incredible - it has challenged me, pushed me to think bigger and better and taught me that it's possible to foster a sense of kinship and whanaungatanga  through video call alone. As the academy was virtual this year, we participated in 2 sessions per week. One was a design session, where we ran through the design thinking process and the other was a coaching session. Each week we discussed another step in the design thinking process, from gathering user data to prototype creation. There was lots of opportunity for discussion - we frequently made use of breakout rooms and got to share our ideas with an 'affinity buddy' who acted as a sounding board.  I was fortunate to have Chris Harte for both sessions. He was a fantastic coach! Chris supported us throughout our journey and pushed us to think bigger and do better. I came to really look forward to his coaching sessions and cat...

My students can be poor test takers. It was really evident when I collected my baseline data that some of my students were making careless mistakes in their reading test. I later discovered that a lot of this was due to the fact that they were not monitoring their own understanding of the text while they read. As such, we have been discussing this in class, using the framework below: To gather data throughout my inquiry, I have been giving my students short mini tests, with an unseen levelled text (at instructional level) and a few questions. From this I also gave some students a Probe test to collect summative data as well. I have selected a target group to focus on (I originally was looking at the whole class), who have consistently been in attendance for our literacy lessons since returning from the lockdown. Most of these students are achieving around their chronological age, but I believe have the potential to be achieving above it. Year 7's Boy 1 This boy has identified that ...

 How well do your students self-reflect and monitor their understanding of a text? After inquiring into my practice and my learners reading habits, I noted that many of them were not noticing when they stopped understanding something. We had a lot of discussion and discovered that we might lose focus of a text for a number of reasons, sometimes our eyes are walking over the words, but our minds are dreaming of something else.  After consulting research literature, my class data, analysing my own practice and conversing with other teachers on this matter, I designed an intervention. In its current iteration, we are reading a short chunk of text (about a paragraph) and rating our understanding on a 5 point scale. We co-constructed this 5 point scale together and use it often to ensure the students clearly understand each level clearly. We then discuss any causes for confusion and the strategies that might support this. We apply these and re-read to get a better handle of what we...

 With Auckland experiencing its second Lockdown, we educators once again leapt into action and changed our programmes overnight. We know that online distance teaching looks little like the teaching we do in our classrooms, but at least this time we had experience to draw upon. In response to this second wave, I recorded this video illustrating what my lessons look like this time around. I captured the sequence of the lesson (which is mostly asynchronous) and discuss the adaptations that I have made to my teaching since the first lockdown. To see more lessons from lockdown and to get access to the slides and planning in this lesson, check out Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir.

Covid-19 has been our biggest challenge yet. We have had to change and re-change our plans numerous times, adapt to new styles of teaching and enforce physical distancing with children (no easy task!). With Auckland in the midst of its second lockdown, I've seen lots of teachers try to be positive about the experience and many more vent their frustrations. But I don't think it's so black and white. I'd like to share the real impact of Covid-19 on my classroom; the good, the bad and the ugly  pragmatic. The Good When I reflected on my journey through the last lockdown, I saw myself grow and my teaching improve as we progressed through each alert level. After returning to the classroom, I was providing more opportunities for hands-on learning, my pastoral care improved through more of a focus on hauora (wellbeing) and I was giving my students more agency. Now that we're in a second lockdown, I am further adapting my practice and growing as a teacher - growth that wi...

Five weeks ago, while Auckland was in alert level 1, I made a plan to implement my intervention. My aim was to run it for five weeks, then reflect on how it was going and the adaptations that I had made. This is what my intervention has looked like over the last five weeks (I have started in week two as an inquiry intensive meant that I did not see my literacy class in week one). Week 2 They returned! It was amazing to see my literacy class altogether for the first time since week 8 of term 1 (we taught all curriculum subjects to our maths classes once they returned to school in term 2, as opposed to changing classes for different subjects). I ran my intervention this week with my two target groups. It actually took a bit of work getting reciprocal reading set up again as we had some new students and we hadn't done it in a really long time. I discussed reading strategies really explicitly with my learners and noticed that these questions came easily to me, as I had been working on...

Since coding entered the NZ curriculum, there has been a real surge in teacher professional development in this area.  Personally I am thrilled to see an increasing number of students find the joy in code. It really does feel good to programme something, no matter how simple it might be. I have been very fortunate to have been able to include coding in my teaching since I first started out, thanks to the PD I received from  organisations such as OMGTech! and events such as EdTech Summits. The biggest enabler to my teaching however, is definitely the hour of code . If you haven't been on this site before then you have my blessing to stop reading this post and sign up to the site right now. Seriously, it makes coding so simple!                  There is of course some skill required to integrate coding into your current programme. This was why my colleague Hannah West and I lead a short workshop into bring code into maths. We hope t...